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Next-Gen Turbines Set to Give Wind A New Lease of Life

Appliance giants GE revealed an exciting innovation this week with the official announcement of it’s next generation wind turbines, bringing a huge leap forward in efficiency and storage. As long-time monitors of the commercial energy sector will know, whilst wind power sees many small innovations and new methods of implanting existing technology in more efficient locations, leaps forward in the efficiency of the turbines themselves are both few and minor in scope.

However, GE’s new line of wind turbines are not only capable of generating an incredible 20 and 24 percent more power than the next-best in-class model of any manufacturer, but go some way to combating the indeterminacy of power generated in wind farms.

Dubbed the Brilliant 1.6-100 and 1.7-100, these new models of wind turbines aim to live up to their title by implementing two exciting innovations for commercial energy – battery storage and what GE call an ‘industrial internet’.

The battery storage allows the power generated by the turbine to be stored before going into the grid, allowing for a more consistent input into the system, even when the wind is inconsistent. In order to maximise that efficiency, GE’s industrial internet system processes data to predict highs and lows in wind speed and power usage to adjust how much is stored and released into the grid accordingly.

Perhaps most excitingly, whilst many of the wind-power projects we feature here on the site are in the development phase or pending further research, GE’s new ‘Brilliant’ wind turbines are already in production.

Not only that, but several installations have been confirmed, with almost seventy headed to New South Wales, Australia later this year and a further 59 shipping out to Michigan in the United States – with both projects expected to be putting wind-generated commercial energy into the grid by the end of 2014.